Test Drive: 2012 Hyundai Elantra GT GLS

By Kevin Harrison

If there was ever a classic typical TV comedy where all the characters were cars (and bear with me on this), there would be specific car models that could easily be cast. The Toyota Camry, for instance, could be the typical ‘TV dad’ always sticking to routine, always conservative and always filled with stories of “you know Billy, back in my day…”

The mother could be the Volvo XC60 R-Design – beautiful, smart, dependable, tough when need be and completely lovable. She is selfless, always there for the family and doesn’t ask too much in return for herself, but has a bit of a wild side which comes out on the rare occasion that she dips into the sauce a bit: “Moms been drinking again…”

Then you’d have the bratty younger kid who, of course, would have to be the Honda Civic Si. Always buzzing around, full of energy and always annoyingly trying to get all the attention, yet also loveable all the same.

The role of the teenager daughter could be the Jaguar XJ, stunningly gorgeous yet fairly high maintenance and a bit self-centered. She always has the latest gadgets and technology which distracts her from the rest of the family drama.

But there is a bit of a shocker in another role. It seems as though the Hyundai Elantra GT has taken the role of the person we all hate: the guy who steals the girlfriend away from the good guy. Typically this role would be given to the Ford Mustang or the Dodge Viper, but I think the Elantra GT would do strongly in the audition. And here’s why:

It takes on this role in the real world. And I have proof.

“Oh I’m thinking about getting one of those when it comes time to replace my Civic,” responded a colleague when I mentioned that my tester for that week was the Hyundai Elantra GT. While Hyundai has made obvious strides in the automotive industry in short order, it’s still a tad shocking to hear something like this uttered from time to time. The Honda Civic is the king of sales in Canada and even retains the title despite the almost unanimous conclusion that the new version is worse than the one it replaces. Civic owners are a lot like Volvo owners. They pledge their allegiance wholeheartedly to their car and rarely even consider an alternative.

So you can imagine my shock when I heard my dad, currently on his third Volvo and a fan through in through, say the same thing. The Elantra GT is on his list when his C30 is on its way out.

And then there are two friends of mine which I helped to pulled the trigger on an Elantra GT just recently, coming from a BMW 3-series. Granted their 3-series was older and needed a lot of work to make it roadworthy again, but like Civics and Volvos, BMW has very little problem in retaining a fan base as well.

It seems the Elantra GT is having no problem luring people from their relationships and loyalties to their cars.

So what is it about the Elantra GT that is so appealing?

Well for starters, it looks good. Stand-out good. The flowing sleek lines of the sedan transfer quite well onto the hatch and give it a rather sporting look rather than an elegant look – exactly what a little hatch should portray. Its side profile almost has a Mercedes-Benz B-Class look to it, only it pulls the look off better.

Secondly, the interior is well laid out and is quite attractive. It is well-executed and is modern looking. The centre stack is a slightly different design from its sedan counterpart and there are lots of soft-touch materials where they truly matter. There is an extremely large panoramic roof that pretty much spans the length and width of the roof. This allows lots of light to shine in which really brightens up the otherwise dark interior if you go with a dark interior colour. Rear legroom is decent for a compact vehicle as is cargo room with the seats up. That volume increases with the seats down, but they don’t fold even close to flat making it a bit difficult to load certain items. The cloth material for the seats is a bit rough feeling, however it’s fairly easy to find your perfect driving position thanks to the power driver’s side seat. There is a generous amount of cubby holes to store spare change, cell phones, sunglasses etc.

The Elantra GT gets its power from a 1.8 litre 4 cylinder which produces 148 horses with 131 pound foot torque. This is adequate for this sort of vehicle and power can really be brought out through the six-speed manual transmission (an automatic is optional on the base and GLS model but standard on the top of the line SE model). Engine noise is a bit intrusive to the cabin and gear shifts are not as smooth as they probably should be.

While on the road the Elantra feels fairly solid and comfortable. It can, however, get a bit out of sorts if the suspension encounters a rather large bump or pothole. The suspension is tuned a bit differently than the sedan and it shows. The GT is able to handle corners a bit more gracefully however I would stop short of calling it a good handling car. The 16 inch wheels can easily loose grip and the GT has a tendency to under steer. It’s clear that some effort was put into the Elantra GT to make it ‘sportier’ than the sedan, but no one at Hyundai went overboard to achieve that.

Steering is quite numb despite Hyundai’s efforts to give the driver a ‘choice’. There are three steering modes to choose from : comfort, normal and sport. As you’d expect, comfort provides the lightest steering feel while sport provides the heaviest. In reality, this does absolutely nothing in terms of actual steering feedback and feel. All this does is give the driver a choice of how much effort they need to put into turn the wheel. It’s really quite tacky and I’m not sure any typical Elantra buyer would even use the feature. And even if they did, I would wager that most would keep it in ‘normal’ mode anyway so it renders having a choice rather pointless.

The Elantra is officially rated at 7.3 L/100 kms in the city and 4.9 L/100 kms on the highway. During a mix of city and highway driving I returned a rather disappointing 9 L/100 kms. A vehicle of this size with an engine of this size should be able to do better than that. I’m not quite sure what to attribute to this higher than normal fuel consumption rating to other than possibly using the air conditioning more than I otherwise would have due to a few scorching days that week.

But if you look at today’s Elantra GT and compare it to the Elantra GT before it, it’s quite clear that Hyundai has done its homework. The Ford Focus 5-door and Mazda3 5-door have long been the front runners while the Elantra GT was never really in the picture.

So then, perhaps it’s a bit unfair to label the Elantra GT as the villain of the story; the guy who doesn’t think twice when hitting on a girl that says she has a boyfriend. Perhaps the Elantra is more like the guy that could never get a girl but then, after years of bullying and ridicule finally decided to take years of self-improvement courses, clean up their appearance and, voila. The nerd becomes the popular cool kid. And in the auto industry, it doesn’t get much better than that.